


Prompt - Falling, a random AT-AT driver.

by Munnin



Series: The Star Wars Write Stuff challenge. [19]
Category: Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 01:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9855965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: In a moment, everything changes.





	

He hated Hoth from the minute they landed. 

The way it looked – the vast sea of white, ground and sky almost indistinguishable. What few landmarks there were lost all sense of scale. Everything was so stretched, so flat. There was no depth, no sense of perspective. Every landing of the AT-AT’s heavy feet felt jarring and misbalanced. Like trying to walk down a flight of uneven stairs in the dark, he never quite trusted his balance. 

And it was ‘his balance’. He’d been driving AT-ATs most of his career. They weren’t just machines to him. They were vast lumbering extensions of himself. He could tell one servo from another by the slightest variation of pitch or him. He could feel when something pulled or strained but the vibrations in the panel, in the controls. 

And right now, he felt off-kilter, unbalanced. It was all this white! 

Even the little rebel fighters zipping around him, giving the crew something to target, something to focus on didn’t help. They curved and twisted, giving no divide between sky and land.

And then it happened. 

As the gunner crew fired at the circling little flyers, he felt his rear right leg lock in the act of stepping. The servos whined and groaned, trying to transfer weight forward. But his left foreleg wasn’t moving right either. 

No. 

No, no, no!

His hands danced over the panel, overriding motors before they strained past breaking. 

They had a grapple on him. Around his legs. 

There wasn’t enough of a horizon to see but his inner ears screamed at him that they were falling. Before the tip sensors, before the alarms, he knew they was falling. 

He was falling. All of him.

He closed his eyes, wishing he could block out the sound of his seared and screaming gears as they died.


End file.
